Sophia Parnok
Kitchen-garden

The greedy saline soil had eaten everything.
I rooted out the twisted, writhen roots of
The vines that curled here once upon a time –
The earth was nubbly, desiccated, scabby,
Like a feverish sick woman’s lips...
Beneath its lacerated sole my foot
Grew calloused from leaning on the shovel,
My hands were swelling with a painful fire,
As iron would collide with buried skulls.
She put up quite a fight against me with
A kind of atavistic vengefulness, but I
Went at her with my pick – like so, like so,
I will out-stubborn your stubbornness!
Here sprightly peas will soon begin to curl,
The corn will raise its thick stalks skyward,
An elephantine pumpkin, big with child,
Will loose her serpent tresses like the Gorgon.
Ah! Neither crocuses nor snowdrops smell
In spring so satisfyingly of spring as
The garden bed’s first-blooming cucumber!...
The sharp fang of my pick shone in the sun,
Around me, clumps of earth bobbed up and crumbled,
A sea breeze blew, the sweat ran down my back
And cooled, congealing as a cold slender snake, –
And never had the rapture of possession
Burned through me with such cloudless
Completeness and such piercing pride...

And in the valley there, the almonds fade
And in their place the peach trees start to bloom.

Translated by Diana Lewis Burgin